the grass beyond the door
by verity candor
Summary: The difficulty/with love, I want to say, is sometimes/you only know afterwards that it's arrived/or left. / or, Teddy and Lily, walking old roads until they lead somewhere new
1. Chapter 1

For the I Dare You! Thread on The NextGen Fanatics Forum, in which I was dared to write a TeddyLily with the prompts trees, life and splinter. This was originally going to be all (no one said it had to be romantic, hah!) but then it swelled alarmingly and so this is going to show up in chapters. Oh well.

* * *

_the grass beyond the door_

"You give me midnight apples in a car with the windows down.  
You give me the flashbulbs of an electrical storm.  
You give me thunder and the suddenly green underbellies of clouds."  
- _catalogue of ephemera_, rebecca lindenberg

She never really manages to let go of him; no, that's not right. It's more that he comes along with her; sort of like the reddish dust from the garden that she scrubbed her travel boots in - so she's always thought of them as her travel boots, that's funny - before she'd left home the first time.

For most people, the distance of years and miles – half her life and more – should make him irrelevant to her life, a splinter that borders on the barest edges of her memory and doesn't really matter at all. She hasn't even seen him since she began Hogwarts, and in her memories he's just a bright, smiling smear of turquoise hair and a keen sparkle of earring – but maybe that's _why_ she associates him so strongly with home – because nothing quite says warmth to her like the memory of a dinner table overstuffed with six people and the bright shapes of Teddy's hands flying as he talked to all of them and surprised her dad into laughter with an accidental charm or a joke that none of the kids understood. In, some ways, she figures, Teddy is a talisman of home even more than her parents - for her, home, family, is the house surrounded by trees out in the countryside, near The Holyhead Harpies' old practice grounds, and while her parents are the house in Godric's Hollow and James and Albus are Hogwarts and yearly bar trips in London, Teddy is bound up in her warmth-filled childhood like the grain of sand within a pearl. The one thing that vanished and drew away with it that childhood feeling of warm, of safe, of protected with it.

And, of course, it's embarrassing, but she did absolutely cling to him back then – but any nine-year-old would be half in love with a boy who told her she was pretty when her brothers made fun of her hair, and charmed her dolls to actually drink tea and say 'please' and 'thank you', and listened to all of her completely stupid comments as though they were the words of a colleague or a friend.

He'd moved away after his grandmother died in Lily's first year. Now, after years of distance, she understood how things like that shook the ground beneath your feet and stole you out of your shoes, but at eleven she had thought she had a right to keep everyone who loved her, and she'd been furious. She got a few letters the first two years, too, and wrote him lengthy, mostly illegible responses that she never sent. She imagines that a few of those old letters are still hidden in the back of the wardrobe in her old room, or wherever she had squirreled away her secret things in the old House.

One time she'd planned out a wedding – a _perfect _wedding – and decided that Teddy had to marry Victoire in a wedding just like it. Of course, he'd roared with laughter and asked why Victoire, and not Molly – why he shouldn't marry _Lily_ even. She'd proceeded to insist that he marry Victoire, because Victoire was pretty, and nearly as nice as him, and the best cousin. He'd insisted otherwise, and they'd argued about it all afternoon.

She's leaving again today, and so she heads out to the old tree behind the so-called hotel she's staying in, and rubs her travel boots in the scraggly patch of dirt around its base, before walking back inside on her tiptoes, trying to keep as much dirt as possible on the bottom. She could charm it, of course, but that feels like cheating. She can see the hotel manager-concierge-bellhop-and-one-man-room-service staring puzzledly at her from the top window. She waves cheerily and blows him a kiss – shocking him into retreat – because she doesn't yet know enough Greek to tell him that the only way she can leave is if she carries a little bit of Skillountia away with her, on her feet.

Inside the room, she takes off her boots carefully and pulls out the battered map in her trunk, affixing it to the wall with a haphazard charm. Shutting her eyes, she scrabbles on the wardrobe behind her until she grabs a handful of toffees from the half-open bag, and flings them in the general vicinity of the wall. She peers through one eye and then the other, and then whispers "Land ho!" on sighting a telltale brown-gold splotch stuck to a land mass. Stalking closer, she plucks the toffee off the wall and taps the map with her wand until she can see the name clearly. She murmurs it under her breath until she has it memorized._ Maastricht._

It doesn't take particularly long to set up the trip. She's already packed, and the Greek Embassy is almost too full of cheerful, helpful wizards and witches. She's got her Portkey set up and ready in under two days, and both her suitcases stuffed in a wristlet from her Aunt Hermione an hour before it leaves. She shuts her eyes, and can't decide if it's a prayer or a wish when she begins to chant _No rain, no rain, no rain_.

Happily, there is no rain. There is also very little sky, and too much shade. But, after so many mountains and expansive farms in Greece, there is something comforting about the city streets. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend she is being cradled by the hum of a million heartbeats pressing against her, and at her ungodly hour of waking (she really ought to try and bully Vic or Roxy into inventing a spell for jetlag) there is something familiar about the way the light touches the buildings which makes it look almost like London.

She unpacks her belongings into the rented flat, and traces her fingers over the lacquered box she bought in the gullies of Hyderabad. She can't actually remember the market itself, but inside the box, within a small vial marked _Hyderabad, Spring 2030, _there hides the fierce throng of people dashing and squabbling through the streets, and the bright colours of a hundred dresses strung out for display and the jangle of jewelry amidst the harsh symphony of the street.

She runs her fingers across the box one more time, imagining the looks on her family's faces when she drags them by the hand through the streets of her memories, before she replaces it on her highest shelf, far from the prying eyes of anyone who walks in. She carefully digs out the travel boots, and slips them on before she twines the bright, Pakistani scarf she's grown to favor around her throat. The box is always the second-to-last thing she puts away, and then the boots. She's almost tacked the scarf on to the routine, but it still teeters on the edge of being permanent. The last thing she (always) swirls on is a leathery brown coat over her blouse, before she swirls herself out and into the city.


	2. Chapter 2

_the grass beyond the door_

"I won't change. I want to give  
Everything away. To wander forever.  
Here is a pot of tea.  
Let's share it  
Slowly"

-_interrogative, _tracy k. smith

It's almost dark – a sweeping blue eyelid is shutting over top of the buildings, and Lily wants to get back inside the hotel before the nighttime wakes up and splashes its series of lights over the streets. But it's also her second night in the city, and – as per tradition – her first night out with the boots on, her first night with all of the dust and gum wrappers and all of the precious litter the city is built on. It must be because she's been thinking of him so much, but Lily recognizes the bright spark of laughter winging its way over the dirt and the semicircles of the streetlamps even before she sees his face.

Her head shoots up, half disbelieving, but – _there – _is a thatch of bright green hair (_still?_) caught in the streetlight next to a lit doorway. She feels a sudden leaping recognition when he turns and his profile is exactly the same as it was a decade-and-a-half ago – _handsome, _notes a part of her that was missing when she was ten – but every part that wasn't missing fifteen years ago wants to charge across the streets and fling herself at his knees, screaming out what she's done that day and waiting for him to rub her hair and look down and call her 'Carrot.' Her grin is so wide she can feel it pushing at her ears, and "Teddy!" she's calling out, suddenly, "_Teddy!_"

His head pops up in an eerie imitation of her own only minutes ago, and he looks around wildly until he catches sight of her waving arm. Even from a distance, she can see the stunned shock on his face, and the slowly dawning disbelief it is turning into as they start walking towards one another.

"Lily," he says, once they are close enough, "Lily Potter," and then, looking just as overwhelmed as Lily feels, he envelops her in a hug, beaming. He steps back after a moment, shaking his head. "Merlin, you – you look just like your mum from far away – for a minute, I actually thought Ginny'd time-traveled or something –" he breaks off with a laugh, and shakes his head again, looking her up and down incredulously.

From close-up, Lily realizes that he doesn't look exactly like her Teddy either – there are a few spiderwebby crow's feet at the corner of his eyes, and a pair of laugh lines are etched firmly at the corner of his mouth – quotation marks framing his every word. Lily has no doubt that Teddy's very quotable indeed.

"What are you doing here?" he manages at last, and Lily shrugs, helplessly, still beaming up at him.

"I'm – I'm traveling –" she gets out, and then, "Where've you _been_? What are you doing _here_?" she asks, and it's half Lily Luna, twenty-four-year-old-on-vacation, and half Lily-Billy, six-year-old wedding planner with a mission.

"The usual – Cursebreaking millennia-old curses, killing re-animated grave guardians –" he lets out another half-laugh, "I even saw a manticore – it was nearly dead, poor thing – but you were always asking if you could have one back when –"

"Really? I did?" Lily says, with a frown. She had barely gotten through her Care of Magical Creatures classes awake – when had she liked _manticores_?

Teddy shrugs, and laughs a little nervously – and this she remembers perfectly, a laugh of little bells, shown off to best advantage around pretty girls who whispered cheeky comments about his hair, "You… well, you wouldn't remember, that's a decade-and-a-half ago." He chokes out another "_Merlin_," on a laugh, before he looks back up at her for a slow moment. "You're so _tall_." He says at last, disbelievingly.

She is – she's 5' 10", and Teddy noticing it is somehow the thing that pushes her closest to crying that night. "Are you free? Do you want to get a drink?" she asks instead, scrubbing at her face to push the specter of tears away. "There's a -" She turns to point.

"Yeah, okay." He says, glancing back, forward, back, voice a little scratchy. "Yeah."

There's so much to talk about, and at the same time, nothing at all – so many things they've shared, and at the same time, nothing at all. A hundred different paths they've forgotten they walked together, a hundred more that they've walked apart. They talk about all of them, or as many as they can – and in between there are the gaps they fill in for one another – marriages, promotions, the childhood memories that predicted them and all of the ones that didn't. Teddy says a little, a very little about leaving England and Lily tells him even less about her job and the Prophet and how she loves it, really, but sometimes you wear through things, and you have to leave and come back or its less than nothing to have had it at all.

Of course, awkwardly, not awkwardly, she asks if Ted has gotten married yet – it comes out strangely, she knows, because _him_ being old enough to have children is terrifying to her in some way that Rose or James or Molly being that old isn't. He shoots her a briefly chary look that suggests he's been asked too often, then smiles and shakes his head.

"No, not yet. Though I did just meet a lovely woman recently." He adds, waggling his eyebrows.

"Oh?" Lily says, trying to seem more interested than amused.

"Mmhmm. Didn't speak the same language, but judging from the hexes she threw at me, I made quite an impression."

She blinks in confusion. "Er. What?"

He pauses and shoots her a sheepish grin, "…And that would be my cue to mention she was a spirit haunting a crypt in Java." When she starts to laugh, he shoots her another rueful smile. "I'm usually funnier, I promise. And my dates go better, too."

Lily shrugs philosophically, "Well, it's not the _worst_ date I've heard." She launches into one of her best stories – involving a mistaken shag, a naked roommate, a sheep and four pairs of pants, before realizing that far from laughing along, Ted is looking at her, slightly horrified.

"…What?" Lily says, puzzled.

"It's nothing- It's just… you _have _grown up, haven't you?" he says with a short laugh.

A short laugh – a disapproving laugh. Lily feels her fists clench beneath the table. "Oh, don't _you _start," she begins irritably, "It's all right if _you _talk about having dates and all, but the second I bring it up, I'm some sort of a … a … you know." She's heard this rhetoric from everyone from James to her own grandmother, and she has every intention of nipping it in the bud from Teddy if she can. "It's not the 1900s, and I don't have to go living my life like some sort of a nun in convent – "

Teddy interrupts her, throwing up his hands defensively, "Whoa, hey, hey, Lily-billy!" he cries, "It's not that – I don't, I don't care about _that_ – it's just – I've known you since you were born, Lily." He says, subsiding with a laugh, "Since the 'Does kissing fix your booboos?' talk – so sorry if I'm having trouble with this, but last time _I_ saw you, you were too young to even _talk_ about – anything." He says, shaking his head disarmingly.

Lily stops short, eyeing him warily before she bats halfheartedly at his arm. "Well, people grow up, you old twat." She murmurs finally, rolling her eyes and letting the 'anything' slide.

He shrugs and bumps over a seat to plop down next to her, "Yeah, well, look at me – _I've_ managed to avoid the ravages of time, haven't I?" He says the last bit with a dramatic lilt to his voice, and Lily hits him again on principle.

"Oi!" "Just because you're a desperate old man-" "_Hey_!" "-who can't let go of his youth-" "Feelings!" "-doesn't mean you've actually gotten away from growing up."

"You ... are a terrible young lady." He pretends to pout at her, making his eyes wide and dewy, before he tugs at his ear. "Is it the earring, though? Does it make me look like I trying too hard?"

Lily nods, making her eyes as serious and innocent as possible, though she can't actually change them the way Teddy did, and Teddy sighs and crumples against the chair. "Oh, woe is me." He wails, throwing a hand up against his forehead as Lily begins to snicker, "I am undone, it seems, by my desire to impress hordes of younger, sexier women – Alas, alack –"

A pair of tourists walk by and one points at Teddy going, "Shakespeare?" and Lily's snicker involves into full-blown laughter, which Teddy joins in on, until they both conclude that next time they meet, sex is absolutely not allowed as a conversational topic.


End file.
